[Crown Copyright Reserved. 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN S, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION, 
No. 10.] (1918. 
LVIII—SOME NOTES FROM A WEST INDIAN CORAL 
ISLAND. 
T. M. Savace ENGLISH. 
These notes have been made during a three years’ residence in 
Grand Cayman, an island of the British West Indies, 17 miles 
long, 1 to 6 miles wide, 19° north of the Equator, and in the track 
of the ocean current from the Eastward which afterwards becomés 
the Gulf stream. 
This island has a comparatively dry climate with irregular 
rainfall, a temperature ranging between a few degrees above 90° 
and a few degrees below 60°, and well-marked summer and winter, 
generation has flowered. 
Grand Cayman is a typical “coral island ” nowhere more than 30 
or 40 feet above sea level and, being entirely composed of porous 
rock, practically devoid of fresh water except for a few days or at 
the most weeks after heavy rain when the mud at the bottom of 
some of the depressions in the almost universal rock is covered by 
enough water to maintain a scanty aquatic flora, including Sagittaria, 
Typha, Jussiaea, and Ceratophyllum. Nymphaea ampla which occurs 
in a few places is very possibly of human introduction and in any case 
is likely to be exterminated before long by cattle. Any hole in 
the rock deep enough to reach sea level holds brackish or more 
probably salt water which as a rule rises and falls with the tide ; 
(32684—6a.) Wt, 212—780. 1125, 12/13, D&S8, 
